Was Peleton Building or breaking Stereotypes?
Peloton produced a commercial in December of 2019 that picture a husband giving his wife a Peloton bike for Christmas (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijof8uw4OHs&t=31s). The ad depicts him surprising his wife, and the bike entirely changing her life where she got to use it for an entire year and then her thanking her husband at the end of the year (the following Christmas for the gift that changed her life.
The ad received a tremendous amount of pushback as it dives right into gender stereotypes about men and women in relationships AND goes against the body positivity movement very strongly. The woman in the video was portrayed as she felt that working out and changing her body was going to change her life, and this is a message that many feel strongly against advertising. In response to the ad, Peleton received a tremendous amount of hateful posting on social media with lots of obnoxious comments coming their way.
Peloton responded to all that hate by saying that their ad was misinterpreted by so many and that it’s purpose was to celebrate a year of health and wellness. The company did lose some value after the ad hit and the negative comments came flowing in, but by a day or two later the stock was pretty much back to where it started. The company was not at all worried about adverse effects in the long run and their Black Friday traffic was still going strong.
I think Peleton could have avoided all of this trouble they went through had they thought about the adverse messages their ad could send and then prepared the ad accordingly. Perhaps more about the persons health and fitness could have been portrayed so that the messages that Peleton was trying to get through would be adequately explained.
In the long run though I do wonder that with all of the negative press, it actually helped Peloton because it drove traffic about their product, got people talking about who they were and what they had to offer, AND drove people to their site who might eventually be consumers of their products.
